Horseshoes and Hand Grenades
by Kate Christie
Summary: "She pushed, because tonight was about pushing, shoving, knocking each other off balance." Spoilers for 47 Seconds and the Limey promo.
1. Chapter 1

**A/N: My version of the 47 Seconds post-ep. Because I can't stand any more contrite and depressed versions of Beckett, no matter how much more realistic they may be.**

He swallowed slowly, letting the scotch scrape over his palate and throat on its way down.

He was alone in his office, laptop screen blinking back at him almost an hour after sending Jacinda home with the car service. It was midnight, and he hadn't written a word in days.

He had used writing, and Jacinda, as his excuses for staying away, and after Beckett had met his blonde distraction at the precinct, she'd seemed only too happy that he had stayed away.

What he didn't understand were the looks that had come before her anger. Confusion and even a flash of pain painted her features when Jacinda first appeared. He had the monopoly on pain-she had no claim to it after her big reveal the week prior. And why should she care if he's moved on? If anything, it should make her feel better, assuage the guilt and the pressure he hoped were weighing on her with her secret.

He finished the last of his scotch and stood up to refill his glass. He had been out with this woman, beautiful, bubbly, happy woman, seven times in as many days. He loved that she let him take her to five-star restaurants, let him drive her around in his Ferrari, didn't mind the flash of the paparazzi following them around at the club opening the night before.

But when he kissed her, something was... off. All the giddy thrill and the butterflies and the pounding heart were just... absent. His lips were going through the motions, totally disconnected from his body. Well, maybe not his body, but certainly his brain and his heart and his soul. All of those parts were still otherwise occupied, despite his best efforts.

And they hadn't slept together. His whole purpose in starting something new had been to get his mind off Kate, and the surest way would be to get his body on to a beautiful woman's. Jacinda was a sweet girl and very pretty, and certainly very willing to provide a distraction of any, and he meant any, kind.

But every time they were alone, clothes getting rumpled, hair pushed askew, a visceral, sick feeling came over him and he had to stop. Tonight it had been so obvious it was embarrassing. She'd shifted to sit on his lap on the couch and he'd physically moved her off on to the cushion beside him and stood up to pace.

The look in her eyes as she watched him disengage reminded him of Kate, and again he wondered why the hell this should bother the detective so much. Jacinda had, understandably, felt a bit put off by his odd behavior, and she'd left soon after.

Now, here he stood pouring more liquor into his glass, despite its absolute failure to fill any of the emptiness inside him.

When he heard the loud knock, he was glad his mother had taken Alexis away for the weekend—they didn't need to be privy to his first fight with this new woman. The knock came again, more forceful this time, and accompanied by an unmistakable voice.

"Castle?"

Oh god, what was Kate doing here at midnight on a Saturday? His first instinct was to ignore her and hope she assumed he was still out, but then he thought maybe something was wrong with a case or with the boys. And hell, she could pick his lock if she really wanted to get in, and then how would it look, with him cowering behind his scotch in his office?

He took his drink to the door with him, though, hoping he could bluff her into thinking his date was still here.

He opened the door a crack, and his jaw hit the ground.

She stood in his hallway in the highest black heels he'd ever seen her wear, short, curve-hugging black dress peeking out from beneath her long black coat. Her hair was down, curls spilling over her shoulders, dark make-up intensifying the almost predatory look in her eyes.

"Beckett?" he croaked out. "What are you doing here?"

She grabbed the edge of his door and wedged it open, stepping past him, the hollow sound of her heels echoing as she stalked into his living room.

Everything that had gone dormant over the course of the past week now slammed into his heart, his gut, his head. Was she here to torture him? Hadn't she done enough damage over the past 10 months?

After what was probably an unreasonable pause, he finally shut the door and followed her with leaden feet. Whatever she was doing, he knew his heart would come out of it in smaller, less recognizable pieces.

She hadn't turned, still stood facing his bookshelves, hands on her hips.

"I hate to sound like a broken record, but, what are you doing here?"

He was doing his best to maintain the cool, callous tone he'd used on her all week.

"I figured I'd be interrupting something with your blonde."

She was spitting venom, voice as icy as the day she'd inadvertently revealed her secret in the middle of an interrogation.

"I can't see how that's any of your business."

She turned at that, eyes sparking.

"Really? Because up until a week ago, I thought it was my business."

She nearly closed the distance between them in three strides.  
>He fought the urge to take a step back.<p>

"I can't imagine why."

She blinked once, long and slow. A breath flared her nostrils. When she spoke again, her voice was so deep, so low, he had to strain to make it out.

"Are you going to try to tell me you haven't been in this with me? That I've been imagining all the looks and the touches and the invitations?"

Her gaze flicked to his lips and back up to his eyes. He couldn't open his mouth, had no acceptable lie to counter her truth.

"I don't know why you chose now to change your mind. Why you decided to give up on me at the very moment when I thought we were almost there." Her voice climbed to a fiery crescendo. "But I am not about to stand aside and let this diversion you've picked to be my substitute walk away with you. I'm not letting you do this, not to yourself, and not to me."

She had moved closer, standing with her face inches away, her heels evening her eyes with his.

"I've worked for almost a year to get better at this. At being able to tell you how I feel."

This was really rich. She'd known for a year exactly how he felt, and what did she do? Strung him along, never even gave him the courtesy of telling him she didn't feel the same. But now she wants to tell him. Too fucking late.

"Fine, Beckett, how do you feel?"

Her eyes flashed defiance, and maybe something like fear, and then she grabbed his shirtfront, hauled him against her, and crushed her lips against his. Her tongue insinuated itself between his lips, and he moaned into her mouth as he opened for her. She wrapped one arm around his neck, not letting go of her grip on his button-down. Her fingers snaked into the hair at the nape of his neck and pulled him closer.

For a spit second, he stood frozen, so stunned by her attack he didn't know what to do with his hands. And then something in his brain clicked into place, and he couldn't find enough silky skin or firm flesh or chestnut curls to satisfy his seeking hands. She let out a grunt of frustration when he forced her to let go of him to push her coat from her shoulders, but their mouths never parted, and he was clinging to her again before she could change her mind and step away.

Once tongues had explored warm depths, teeth had nipped at swollen lips, breath had been shared, he felt her easing back, pulling herself together. She parted from him only to fall right back in as he chased her, held her close with fingers wound into her hair, massaging her scalp. But she was intent on pausing, god he hoped it was only a pause, and she pulled back ever so slightly. He opened his eyes, half-afraid he was held captive in an alcohol-induced fantasy, but hers were looking back, green and gold through her feathered lashes.

When she spoke, breathless from their kiss, the words rushed out, washed over him.

"I love you, too."

His eyes widened as the totality of her words hit him. She'd said she loved him, too. She'd said the words and admitted her lie without even knowing it was why he'd given up on them in the first place.

His heart was suddenly so full, it overruled his brain telling him he should still be angry, still want an apology. But what more apology did he need with her in his arms, kissing him and coming clean?

In that moment, it all washed away. In that moment, he was the man who he always had been, the one who wanted nothing more than to love her and be loved in return.

He was still searching her eyes, trying to convince himself that it was real, when a flicker of doubt crossed her face. All of a sudden it hit him-she thought he didn't love her anymore.

Ridiculous woman.

"Am I too late?"

She was holding her breath. He tightened his hold and pulled her into him again. Whispered desperately against the curve of her neck.

"Almost."

He returned to her lips and kissed her again, this time tenderly, with all the hope and possibility that he'd been absolutely sure were lost forever. As he detached his lips, rising on his toes to kiss her on the forehead, he murmured through a smile:

"Horseshoes and hand grenades."

He brushed his nose against hers.

"What?"

He pulled back just far enough to see her eyes, still unsure. He smiled his first real smile since last May as he explained.

"Almost only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades."

**A/N:**

**I have her side of it also, if anyone wants to hear it. But with the plethora of 47 seconds fics, this may not make the cut. Let me know. I'm also now on Tumblr: KathrynChristie -KC**


	2. Chapter 2

**Horseshoes and Hand Grenades 2**

**A/N: Think of this chapter as the chocolate Beckett wafers, encasing chapter one's Castle Oreo crème filling.**

Anger was driving her. She could feel the pulse and the buzz of it, like flames flickering on either side of her face. At this point she was running on one too many tequila shots, or one too few, depending on your perspective. She was still completely, exquisitely in control, but her inhibitions were one notch lower than usual. Ok, maybe two notches. She'd been smart enough to take a cab to his place. But she hadn't been smart enough to go home instead.

She couldn't believe it. Even now, after seeing the blonde bimbo more than once with her own two eyes, she could not understand how her partner could just give up. The woman's smiling face kept flashing before her eyes, propelling her in her somewhat hasty plan.

Lanie had said it best after their first margarita, he just got tired of waiting. Wouldn't any man get tired of waiting after almost a year? She'd been so deep inside herself, clawing frantically to dig out of the pit of her torn psyche, her quite literally broken heart, that she hadn't seen that his resolve might be flagging.

But deep down she knew there was something more. There had to be some trigger to cause the 180 degree turn. He'd been about to tell her he loved her, sitting right there next to her desk in the middle of the precinct for Ryan and Esposito and anyone else nearby to hear.

She had _not_ imagined every moment that had passed between them since their conversation on the playground swings. She hadn't missed that Rick had sent Esposito in to drag her out of her fear-induced downward spiral when he knew she wouldn't let him get close enough. She knew he'd walked on eggshells, kissed an art insurer for show, and been wounded when a former muse had betrayed them. Not just him—she was sure it affected him even more because he'd convinced her that the CIA agent was trustworthy, and as result they'd been seconds away from dead, twice.

Maybe it was the second shot of tequila she had convinced Lanie to do with her, but after they left the bar, anger started to replace the seeping sense of despair that had begun to wash over her in the week since the bomb had gone off.

How dare he flaunt some blonde in her face in front of Ryan and Esposito? That was the Rick she met three years ago, not her Rick. Her Rick had apparently started to regress, and he needed some sense knocked into him. Or kissed into him. She hadn't really decided on that part yet. Hasty plan.

But the thought that had occurred to her as she sat at the bar, fending off men while Lanie was in the restroom, was still ringing in her ears.

Since when did Kate Beckett roll over and give up without a fight?

He was tired of waiting? Well, so was she.

Thus, she found herself in his elevator, putting on extra lip gloss, still dressed to the nines from her girls' night.

She didn't have a clue who would be home, or even if Castle was out with that woman, doing whatever it was they were doing on a Saturday night at midnight. If he was out, she would wait.

The doors opened on his floor. She stepped out into his hallway. Everything felt simultaneously crawling in slow motion and rushing by on fast forward. She was about to confront the man she was in love with, the man she hadn't been able to even share her feelings with, about dating another woman. What right did she have?

She slowly, resolutely closed the distance between herself and his door.

She had the right. Everything he'd said, everything he'd done, even the things she shouldn't have known about, the things she denied knowing, spoke to the fact that she had every right to his heart and his soul and his body. And she wasn't leaving until she had a reason or until she had him. Period. End of discussion.

She raised her hand to knock, and then she paused. She needed to be sure not that she could do this, but that it was what she wanted to do. If the blonde was inside, what then? And what if they were in bed? She knew that at one not-so-distant time, he would have been more than capable of pushing one woman out of his mind by bedding another. Maybe she was giving him too much credit, but something deep in her gut told her that maybe this time it was different. Maybe she wouldn't be watching him head to the Hamptons with a blonde on his arm. If she didn't think so, she wouldn't be standing here, ready to barge in on whatever might be going on.

So yes, she wanted this. She wanted him, and she wanted to know what was going on behind this door, for better or worse. And her head was clear enough that she knew this wasn't all an alcohol-induced tirade that she would regret in the morning. Unless she walked in on them coming from the bedroom, and then she might punch the blonde. However good it might feel at the moment, she would probably regret that in the morning. Punching Rick, on the other hand, she would likely not regret. Much better plan.

With one last deep breath for courage, she knocked loudly on the door.

#######

**Chapter one fits in here...**

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She couldn't help it, she actually laughed-big, open-mouthed guffaws. So much for maintaining an appearance of cool detachment.

The way he'd been looking at her, eyes so serious and so terrified, she had thought for just a split second that she'd been all wrong—he'd left her heart behind and moved on and she hadn't spoken up in time to save them.

She was just in time.

He pulled her against his chest in a bone-crushing hug.

"Why couldn't you just have told me that eight days ago?"

He was smiling; she could feel the curve of his lips on her neck as he exhaled warm breath against her skin. She buried her face against his shoulder.

"Because I was a coward. Because I didn't think I was ready."

"And now?"

"Now I was so furious and jealous and miserable that my stupid brain finally shut up and let me do what my heart wanted to."

"I love your brain, you know that."

She nodded into his collarbone as his hands stroked up and down the muscles along her spine. She wanted to stay just like this, resting in his arms, for her whole life.

"But I think I agree with your heart."

She chuckled lightly.

He slid his hands back up into her hair and tugged her far enough back that she could look into his eyes. They were dark and swimming with just enough moisture that he couldn't quite blink it away.

"I love you. And I'm glad you're ready to hear it, because you must realize that now I'm going to tell you all the time."

Her heart stuttered when he said the words again—finally… finally.

She granted him the eye-roll he was expecting in exchange for his pledge to be annoyingly besotted, but she couldn't suppress the smile that snuck over her lips.

Her heart tightened in pity for the past, for every time she'd given him that eye-roll across a room, or across a car console, or over the phone. This was the way they were meant to have this exchange—tease and exaggerated rebuff—encased in the circle of each other's arms.

She leaned in, eyes deliberately open, and kissed him again, long and slow and deep, watching his pupils dilate as his lids lowered. When they parted, she clamped down on the waves of desire telling her to drag him off to his bedroom. This wasn't the time for more reckless hurry. They deserved better after all this time.

"I want you to tell me."

She saw recognition light in his eyes and knew she didn't need to explain herself.

He let go of his hold on her and reached for her hand, led her to the couch. He sat in the corner, and she assumed he was giving her space, allowing her some distance for this conversation. She politely declined and toed off her heels, settling herself in his lap.

She didn't understand his sudden tight grip around her waist, the insistent inhale against her hair as he clung to her, pulled her against his chest, shifted to rest against the cushion behind him. She did recognize the rightness of it, though.

After a beat, he seemed to come back to himself and loosened his hold slightly, pinning her with his eyes.

"I heard you. When you interrogated that witness on the bombing case, I was behind the glass listening."

Her heart sank straight to the pit of her stomach. Well, that explained the sudden shift. But wait a minute? What the hell?

"Why didn't you talk to me?"

"Since when do we talk to each other about how we feel?"

He had a point. He was winding his fingers absentmindedly through her hair. She leaned her temple against his shoulder, forehead tucked under his jaw.

"But a blonde, Rick? Seriously?"

Her tone was equal measures derisive and damaged.

"It had always helped before."

There was such resignation in that statement, she couldn't believe he'd been in too deep with her. But she pushed, because tonight was about pushing, shoving, knocking each other off balance.

"And this time?"

She hoped she sounded less needy to him than she did to her own ears. Her fingers fiddled with the top button of his shirt, still slightly off kilter from her earlier grip.

"Really not at all."

She let out a breath she hadn't realized she'd been holding as her heart did a flip flop in her chest.

"But you still weren't going to confront me?"

She was plowing through. Nothing would change if they didn't start talking.

"Why bother?" He was idly rubbing his warm palm over her knee, down her shin, up over her calf. "I was convinced you didn't tell me you remembered because you didn't feel the same way. You were probably embarrassed for me, hoping I'd let it drop."

"You couldn't really believe that."

She sat up slightly to see his eyes when he answered her. He could almost meet hers. His voice was gravel, roughing her up as it tumbled over her.

"You'd be surprised what someone can believe when they're hurting badly enough."

She laid her hand over his heart, decided to read from her own memoir.

"Like maybe even the people you love the most are better off without you?"

He looked at her then, and in his eyes she saw their pain running in parallel, so much the same, aligned side by side, doomed to bear witness to one another's suffering, but never meeting. Not until they opened their mouths and bridged the gap.

"Promise me something, Kate?"

She nodded without a thought toward denying him.

"No more not talking."

Her lips curved slightly up at their return to mind reading.

"I didn't want you to find out that way. I was trying so hard to be whole enough to tell you, but I was just too slow."

He slid his hand from her hair and brushed his thumb across her cheek.

"No, you were just in time."


End file.
